CONCURRENT VIEWS 35 



as tests of their antiquity. The mathematical accuracy of squares and circles 

 inclosing large areas, often many acres in extent, is adduced as evidence of scientific 

 culture. The indications of improvement in art, and apparent increase of population, 

 observable in following the courses of the streams towards the south, are received 

 as proofs of migration from the north, protracted, perhaps, and with long intervals 

 of interruption, but still ever progressive in one direction. 



These data, and others of a similar character, were naturally made the basis of 

 conjectures respecting the people to whom the vestiges of ancient residence and 

 ultimate removal should be ascribed. 



On this point there appears to have been a general coincidence of opinion among 

 those who occupied the position of authorities at the time of Mr. Atwater's publi- 

 cation. 



That the inhabitants of America were chiefly descended from two branches of 

 the same Asiatic family, was a doctrine advocated by the learned Dr. Hugh 

 Williamson in 1811 and 1812— the arts of civilization being, in his judgment, 

 traceable to the Hindoos. 1 Dr. Mitchell, whose multifarious erudition sometimes 

 impaired the definiteness and consistency of his reasoning, had taken the ground, 

 in 1815, that " the original inhabitants of America consisted of the same races with 

 the Malays of Australasia, and the Tartars of the North ;" that the former landed 

 in North America, and penetrated across the continent to the region lying between 

 the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, where they constructed the fortifications, 

 mounds, &c. ; and that they were probably overcome by the more warlike and 

 ferocious hordes that came from the northeast of Asia, and were the ancestors of the 

 present race. In 1816, he claimed to establish these hypotheses " by a process of 

 reasoning not hitherto advanced," and, at the close of his argument, declares : " I 

 forbore to go further than to ascertain by the correspondences already stated, the 

 identity of origin and derivation of the American and Asiatic nations, avoiding the 

 opportunity that grand conclusion afforded me of stating that America was the 

 cradle of the human race. I had no inclination to oppose the current opinions 

 relative to the place of man's creation and dispersion, and thought it scarcely worth 

 while to inform a European that on coming to America he had left the new world 

 behind him, for the purpose of visiting the OLD." At a later period of the same 

 year he gave another exposition of his views, repeating his assertion that the phy- 

 siognomy, manufactures, and customs, of the North American tribes of the middle 

 and low latitudes, and of the South Americans, show them to be nearly akin to the 

 Malay race of Australasia and Polynesia. But a new element had entered his 

 calculations, from a suggestion of De Witt Clinton, that some of the " old forts" in 

 New York were of a Danish character. " In the twinkling of an eye," he says, " I 

 was penetrated by the justness of his remark. An additional window of light was 

 suddenly opened to me." He then proceeds to the supposition, that the Danes, or 

 Finns, and the Welshmen (for he puts the followers of Madoc and the Scandinavians 

 together) performed their migration gradually to the southwest, and fortified them- 



1 Some account of the aborigines of America, in his " Observations on the Climate," &c. Hist, of 

 North Carolina, I, appendix B. 



